


Prom

by peterplanet



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterplanet/pseuds/peterplanet
Summary: the two times that peter tried to ask you to prom, and the one time that he succeeded.





	Prom

Peter Parker asked (Y/N) to prom three times.

The first time, he was shaky hands and nervous gazes as he tried to stutter out the words.  _C’mon, Peter,_ he murmured to himself.  _C’mon, c’mon. You’ve fought with the Avengers, you’ve fucking asked this girl to be your girlfriend. Why can’t you ask her to prom?_

He didn’t know why it made him so nervous. Ned reassured him that she’d say yes—she was his  _girlfriend_  after all—but it still didn’t stop his heart from hammering in his chest as he stared at her.

They were sitting in his bedroom studying for the upcoming chemistry test. And, for once, they really were studying. She was looking over her notes on the empirical formula and doing the practice problems that they’d been given as a suggestion. It was their usual habit of silence and studying, something that he grew to love. As much as he loved kissing her, feeling her warmth beneath him as they laid in his bedroom, as much as he loved listening to her stuttered breaths, he also loved that they could be normal like this. It made him feel like a normal teenager in Queens, even though Peter and (Y/N) both know that he’s the farthest thing from.

Her eyes are scanning the pages in front of her and he can’t help but feel his breathing turn erratic. She’s so perfect, so genuine and he cannot fathom the idea that she’s his. They’ve been dating for close to three months now and he knows that the “honeymoon phase” of their relationship is soon to wear off, but he can’t help but feel as though it never will. There will never be a day that Peter Parker falls out of admiration with (Y/N); he knows this by the way that his heart still refuses to calm when she smiles at him or laughs at one of his dumb jokes. He knows it by the poetry that she writes about him in the margins of her notebooks. He knows it by the laughter in her gaze and the starlight in her heart whenever she talks about everything that she admires about him. If there’s going to be one constant in his life, Peter reasons, it will be (Y/N). If there were to be a second constant in his life, he reasons that it will be their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend.

Despite all of this, the thought of asking her to prom makes his heart start to stutter and his breathing to turn wild. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s picturing her fretting over buying a dress, if it’s because he’s envisioning putting the corsage on her wrist that matches his tie, or if it’s because he’s imagining May begging them for pictures. He doesn’t know if it’s any of those ideas or something else, but a little voice in the back of his head is saying that it’s really because he doesn’t understand why she’s with him.

Peter’s heard other boys, girls, and everyone in between talking about her. He’s heard them talk about how beautiful she is, how the sunlight always seems to make hair into a halo atop her head. He has heard them talk about her laugh, how beautiful it is when it’s reflecting a joke that they tell her. And he’s heard the rumors, heard the softly whispered questions of how she can stand to be with  _‘Penis Parker’._

And he can’t help but wonder the same thing. Of all of the people at Midtown High, (Y/N) chose to be with him. She chose to hold his hand, to kiss his lips, and wear his sweaters when she’s cold. She chose him, the boy with the least amount of time for anyone, the boy who cancels dates left and right to do his nightly patrol. Out of anyone who could make time for her and give her the attention that she deserves, (Y/N) still chose to be with him.

“What’s going on in that pretty, smart little head of yours?” She asks, a smile making its way over her features as she leans across the piles of books to tap his forehead with the eraser of her pencil. It’s like she’s reaching across a line that he had built, breaking down the walls around him to allow her to see him even better.

No matter how caught up in her work she is, (Y/N) can always sense when Peter’s not feeling right. She can always tell when he’s feeling off or miffed or upset because she’s (Y/N). And that’s just the type of girl that she is.

And now the words are caught in his throat. He can’t make them come up, can’t start his nervous rambling or find his voice because her eyes are so beautiful; so clear, so bright and he can’t manage to look away from them. He wants nothing more than to ask her in a smooth tone,  _“Will you be my date to prom?”_ But all that comes out of his throat is a staggered groan.

“You feeling alright, Pete?” She asks as her hand comes over to rest on his forehead to check for a fever. Her palm is so soft, her skin so smooth that he can’t help the flush that settles over his cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah!” He finally manages to find the words to smooth out what’s going through his head, even if the words that he manages to find aren’t the exact truth. “Perfect, always good when I’m around you. Just, really stressed for this chem test, y’know? Really want to do well, I guess; it all just caught up.”

If he was brave, if he was Spider-Man in this moment, Peter would have said something to her about prom. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, and now she’s looking at him with that soft gaze that breaks his heart.

If there’s one thing that Peter hates, it’s covering up the truth from (Y/N).

* * *

The second time that Peter Parker asks his girlfriend to prom, it doesn’t go any better than the first. He’s been asking May, been asking Ned for weeks about how to make it perfect. Ned tells him to be bold, that  _‘promposals’_ are what’s in at the moment. But May tells him the opposite.

“Just be yourself,” she tells him with that smile, that motherly gaze to her eyes that makes Peter yearn to call her that. “I see how she looks at you, Petey. If you just ask her, she’ll say yes. She doesn’t need anything extravagant from you because you’re enough for her; it’s written in her gaze, y’know.”

May ruffles his hair after that and kisses his forehead in a manner that he’d usually try to duck away from. But, he doesn’t this time because he craves reassurance; in his moment of broken courage, May strives to help him find it again with the simple, maternal intimacy that he’s missed out on for the majority of his childhood.

(Y/N) comes over later that afternoon. It’s a Saturday, so she’s banned studying from their time together. Usually, they’d go out and get coffee or lunch together, but she told him the day before—Friday—that she really just needed a day to be alone with him. And with her soft, gentle gaze, Peter hadn’t been able to deny her request.

They’ve been kissing for a while, just sitting with each other on the couch and giggling during the pauses that they take for breath. She’s straddling his lap, nudging his nose gently with her own as she pulls back for a moment. The whine that he gives is almost pitiful and it makes her laugh, makes her press her face against his shoulder as she does.

“D’you ever think about prom?” She asks, and it’s now that Peter knows he’s supposed to take the opportunity to ask her.

He knows that he doesn’t technically  _have_ to, that she probably already  _assumes_ that they’re going together, but assumptions and Peter Parker never really mix well. Usually, when Peter assumes something, it’s wrong.

He assumed that people were his friends in middle school, assumed that they were looking out for his best interests when they weren’t. He had assumed that people liked him and wanted to be around him when all they did was make fun of him, poke holes in his defenses that had once been so strong before. Peter Parker had never been popular, but he hadn’t always been a public enemy. He hadn’t always been a laughing-stock, someone easy to pick on, or an easy target. Or, at least, he had never assumed that he was until recently.

Now, he realized that he had just been too naïve to see the truth. And maybe ignorance is bliss, but Peter wouldn’t want to go back to his previous mindset. Not since he had good, reliable friends now; true friends that were good to him, kind to him, honest with him. He didn’t have to assume anything with them, knew that they’d tell him if something was wrong.

So, for Peter to assume that he would be going to prom with (Y/N) wasn’t something that he wanted to do. He wanted to ask her, to question if she wanted to go with him. And now was his chance, his moment to do it, but he couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t make the words leave his mouth and it was driving him insane, made him want to scream.

Instead of screaming, though, Peter nodded and tried to play it cool. “I have a bit, yeah,” he was lying through his teeth, of course. The topic had been consuming him for months on end, for weeks it had been nearly impossible for him to sleep when the thought would pop into his mind. “I think that I’d like to go.”

Ever faithful, ever good, (Y/N) doesn’t pressure him any further on the topic. She knows how to read him better than anyone else—hell, Peter would even go so far as to say that she gives May a run for her money. She can read the anxiety on his features and presses a chaste kiss to his lips in hopes of calming him, her touch gentle like she knows that he needs.

“I think that I’d like to go, too,” she assures him. And it’s in that moment that Peter can stop assuming and know that she feels the same way about him that he does about her, that she wants this experience just as badly as he does.

* * *

At the end of the day, Peter doesn’t ask her in any extravagant way. She doesn’t need that, he knows, she doesn’t  _want_ that. He knows that (Y/N) would appreciate the gesture, that she’d deem it sweet, but she wouldn’t deem it to have been necessary. Some people want extravagant, ostentatious displays of lavish affection. (Y/N), for as long as Peter has known her, has never wanted a relationship like that.

He asks her on a Saturday as they sit curled up on the couch watching Star Wars. Their eyes are glued to the screen, but Peter knows that (Y/N) is the only one of them that’s really focused on it. She’s giggling in all the right places, gasping at all the right times, and he follows her reactions with his own. He’s using her to gauge how he should be responding to one of his favorite movies, and he knows that she’s going to catch on.

His mind is going a mile a minute, running through different phrasings of the same question:  _“Will you go to prom with me?”_ He doesn’t know if he should be so blunt about it, or if he should mask it as something more nonchalant. At this point, though, Peter knows that this isn’t a nonchalant topic; he’s been fretting about it for so long that it’ll be better if he’s just upfront about it.

(Y/N) reaches for the remote to pause the movie. Her eyes flicker over to his form to meet his, her expression tender and concerned but not angry. She’s never angry, never upset with him. Peter supposes that it’s something that she can’t be.

“What’s got you troubled, Peter?” She asks as her hand comes to rest on her knee. “You seem off tonight.”

He knows that he should reply to her question instead of posing another, but Peter has never been the type of person that can let go of his intrusive thoughts. “Will you go to prom with me?”

It comes out just like that. The words that he’s been holding on to for a good number of weeks now are in the open, resting between them for her to take. It’s like he’s given her his heart more than he already has, like they have opened a new chapter of their story together that they won’t be able to erase. And maybe it’s dramatic, but Peter has always been one for dramatics. He might not be able to write poetry about her, but he can make his problems into something bigger than they really were, bigger than they would have been to anyone else.

She’s laughing, her shoulders relaxed in a way that makes him notice she had been tense before. She’s soft as she presses a tender kiss to his cheek, her eyes gentle as she nods her answer. “Of course, I’ll go to prom with you, dumbass,” she breathes through a laugh so breathy that he barely registers that she’s agreed. He always loves to hear the sound of her laugh, so it makes his heart burst to hear two of his favorite things mix together: her laughter and her honey-sweet voice.

And maybe the question hadn’t been something of great difficulty. Maybe it wasn’t anything to fret over. But, if he hadn’t spent weeks worrying about the phrasing of one sentence, if he hadn’t worried about the single sentence that would define a single night of his single lifetime? Well, (Y/N) would be the first to tell you that he’d no longer be the Peter Parker that she had begun to fall in love with.


End file.
